A Look Back at a Season to Remember

As we draw closer to the date the NHL season was supposed to start the realization becomes clear that at least part of this season will be lost. Today our first games were cancelled so us fans need our hockey fix. So I started thinking to myself, how can I get my daily dose of hockey. TSN playing classic games although very entertaining and fun to relive is only once a week and not doing it for me. There is only so many articles and talk shows and T.V. I can watch talking about the lockout.

Just when I was at my most desperate an idea finally hit me. I need to go back in time, remember better times, when there was hockey every couple days, I needed to re live a whole season, but which? Last year? Too soon, we have all the memories still right there in our minds, no surprises. So which to pick, which season will keep us on our toes and bring us back to a great time? For Jets fans, there was one season that came to mind more than any other, it was known as the Season to Remember, the last season of the original Jets.

For many of the younger readers this can be a first look at the 1995/96 NHL season, for others a reminder of times gone by. What we are going to do here at winnipegwhiteout.com is a retrospective of that season, re living every goal, fight, chase for the playoffs, and eventually that fateful day in April of 1996 when the Winnipeg Jets played their last game in the NHL.

The Jets entered the 1995/96 season knowing it would be their last in Winnipeg, and the fans knew it to and showed up in droves, professing their love one last time for their heroes. The team was heavy in young talent, Teemu Selanne was back just a few years after his record setting season and coming off a 48 pt in 45 game year in a lockout shortened season. Keith Tkachuk was another youngster just starting a great NHL career, he wasn’t the only one as a young man the Jets had just drafted 7th overall named Shane Doan debuting. Other names like Doig, Isbister, Zhamnov, and veterans Carlyle, Olczyk, Numminen and Kris King led this group on the hunt for the playoffs. They leaned on goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin, in his first season as a starting goaltender, and he did not let them down. So let’s go back to 1995 together, and check in for game recaps the morning after game days and all the other big news that surrounded this team. Enjoy the ride.